


Here we are as in Olden Days, Happy Golden Days

by trashofalltrades



Series: 'Tis the Damn Season [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (though only referenced in this part), Christmas, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Jewish Booker, Light Angst, Nile Freeman-centric, Post-Canon, Team as Family, competitive gingerbread, conversations during long car rides, extreme gingerbread house decorating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashofalltrades/pseuds/trashofalltrades
Summary: He chuckled. “Did your family ever win?”“Oh hell yeah. My mom and I made these fancy chocolate Christmas tree cookies one year and absolutely destroyed the competition. One year we did gingerbread men, I think another time my dad and I made snowflake cookies. December was just a month of solid baking which I guess is why I’ve always enjoyed doing it.”“That sounds nice.”She nodded, the ache in her chest making a reappearance. “It was,” she said quietly, her fingers going to her cross necklace out of habit.in which Nile misses the way Christmas used to be, Booker makes an emergency candy run, and the team pulls off a surprise gingerbread house competition for the history books.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf & Nicky | Nicolò & Quynh, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: 'Tis the Damn Season [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072913
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	Here we are as in Olden Days, Happy Golden Days

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1 of this series provides some fun context, but isn't really necessary to understand this fic. All you should know is that the whole team is back together, Booker was similarly feeling sad around Hanukkah, and the team played a very chaotic game of dreidel. 
> 
> Content warnings for feeling sad around the holidays and missing family.
> 
> Thanks to ChimaeraKitten for beta reading, coming up with the great art period jokes that made it in here, and introducing me to the wonderful world of gingerbread day!

Nile woke up entirely too early for Christmas Eve morning, the light just starting to seep through her window. Christmas Eve was supposed to be a late, lazy start yet she could already tell she wasn’t going to be able to fall back asleep, rolling onto her back with a groan. She untangled herself from her bed and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee, bleary-eyed but quiet so as not to wake the others up.

The six of them were hunkered down in a safe house of Joe and Nicky’s a ways outside a small German town she hadn’t caught the name of, originally just for a day to recoup until Andy declared that they would stay there through Christmas so everyone could have enough of a breather. And by “everyone” she clearly meant Nile. The mission had certainly been rough—too many traumatized civilians to usher away and too much blood— but nothing they wouldn’t have been able to quickly recover from. The part about staying put so she could have downtime over Christmas went unspoken, but it made her a little teary nonetheless both because they were working so hard to include her and because she really couldn’t stand the thought of them putting everything on hold for her when she felt so far from any sort of celebratory mood and worse, didn’t even know if she wanted to celebrate.

She poured herself some coffee and went to sit in front of the TV, flipping aimlessly through the channels with the sound turned down low, eventually stopping when she got to a channel playing a Christmas movie marathon. She caught the last few minutes of what must have been some German Christmas film before The Grinch started to play, neither of which she wanted to see, but she didn’t bother to change it. She half paid attention as she drained her first cup of coffee and then went back for more, dumping in more sugar than was probably healthy but it was Christmas, damn it.

When she plopped back down on the couch the Grinch was halfway through his plot of stealing Christmas décor and presents. She had forgotten how cute this movie was, even if the Whos of Whoville were not being much of a help at filling her with some sort of magical Christmas spirit like they might have when she was a kid. She reached for the remote, wondering if it was worth continuing to watch or if it would make her sad when Booker walked in and she startled, nearly sloshing coffee onto her lap.

“Sorry!” he said, going to grab his own mug and a breakfast bar before sitting down on the couch next to her and turning towards the TV. “Christmas movies, huh? Do you have a favorite?”

“Eh, not really. My family has strong opinions on movies, but I was more of a Christmas music person.”

He smiled. “Why does that not surprise me at all?”

She smiled back, thinking back to the night before when she had helped Joe clean up the kitchen after dinner and he put on Christmas music with a silly grin. They both hummed along to it while they did dishes, Joe slightly out of tune, and laughing at her as she bopped around the kitchen. It was fun, but there was a melancholy tinge to it, the slower songs reminding her too much of the way Christmas used to feel.

“Is this the one from the Seuss guy?” Booker asked, nodding towards the TV.

“Yeah, Dr. Seuss. It’s an animation of his book _The Grinch_.”

“I thought so. We all know him more from the political cartoons he did during the Second World War before he did all the books.”

Nile just shook her head, trying to imagine an introduction to Dr. Seuss that wasn’t some type of story time. “That’s wild. The Grinch is a good, classic one though. My brother and I watched it a lot growing up or at school.”

“Glad I get to see it now, then,” he said, turning his attention back to the TV. He watched the last few minutes with her, the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes before he joined all the Whos for Christmas dinner and passed the roast beast around. As she watched the end card appear on screen an ache grew in her chest, envisioning her brother watching it again this year, putting it on in the background while he helped her mom cook Christmas dinner. Even after the handful of years that had passed since she had been with her family for Christmas, thinking about it still stung in a way that made her want to go hop on a plane back to Chicago, secrecy be damned, and have one more Christmas morning together.

She turned her attention back to Booker who was watching her, brows knit together. When he caught her eye he smiled and stood up, stretching for a moment before he said, "I’m heading into town if you want to come with me. We need a few more groceries and I still have to get something for my gift.”

“Waiting till the last minute, huh?” she teased. “How did you even manage to do that, you only have to bring one thing.” The team had decided earlier in the week that they needed to do a white elephant gift exchange after listening to Nile describe a particularly rowdy version she had once participated in with friends. There was no way it wasn’t going to devolve into a shouting match, but it would be a fun, pretty low-key activity to do, albeit also probably a bit terrifying depending on how crazy the others got with gag gifts. For her gift, she had created a little dictionary of memes and internet slang she used the most or that they absolutely needed to know along with a tiny blurb about how to use it in conversation. The cover was just the text of the “Judas no” vine since it was semi-Christmas related.

Booker just waggled his eyebrows giving her a cryptic “You’ll see.”

“Fine,” she said, heaving a dramatic sigh as she also stood to take her mug back to the sink. “I suppose I’ll join you then so I can make sure you don’t do anything nuts for white elephant.”

“Oh, it will be great, I promise” he said, raising his hand up in a mock oath. “Grab your coat while I go let one of the others know where we’re going and then we out and then we can head out.”

************

Nile stared out the window while Booker drove, the two falling into a comfortable silence as she watched the countryside go by. The scenery mostly blurred together, the occasional cute farm-style houses with wreaths on the doors and lights in the windows breaking things up.

“Are you going to church with Nicky tomorrow?” Booker eventually asked, glancing over at her.

“Yeah, he offered to take me.” She was relieved he had invited her along, not wanting to try and face it alone but also not wanting to just not go at all. “I’m looking forward to it. I’ll get to sing with him and everything,” she joked. “It feels…I don’t know, a bit odd I guess, but I think it will be fun.”

Booker nodded. “It never feels quite like it did before. Assuming you went with your family, of course,” he added.

She let out a little laugh. “Oh yes. Churchgoing was a whole Freeman Family affair. And around Christmas it was usually more than just services since we’d also help out with the whatever the charity project was that year and do things like the church Christmas cookie contest which was _cutthroat_. My mom’s bible study group trash talked about it for weeks.”

He chuckled. “Did your family ever win?”

“Oh hell yeah. My mom and I made these fancy chocolate Christmas tree cookies one year and absolutely destroyed the competition. One year we did gingerbread men, I think another time my dad and I made snowflake cookies. December was just a month of solid baking which I guess is why I’ve always enjoyed doing it.”

“That sounds nice.”

She nodded, the ache in her chest making a reappearance. “It was,” she said quietly, her fingers going to her cross necklace out of habit. She hadn’t really thought through just how nice it had been until now. When the grief hit her, it was usually about her family and close friends, or more generally the normal life she could have been living. But the sense of community, the sweet older ladies who taught Sunday school and organized the nativity play every year, the holiday potlucks, the sermons that just didn’t sound the same anywhere but _her_ church- she missed all of that too.

Booker gave her a kind smile, turning attention back to the road as if sensing she was working through something.

She glanced out the window again, trying not to think about whether and what her mom would be baking this year and whether she had made anything for her friends at church who had hopefully been able to help her through all of this.

“Christmas was already such a fragile thing,” she finally said, glancing back over at Booker. “My dad was deployed for a few years in there and then he was gone, but usually we managed to make the most of it just the three of us and had some fun. I just…I hope they can still do that now.”

“They can. Maybe not in the same way, but they can and you can.” He was quiet for a moment as he located their turn on the main road that would take them into town before he said, “I think it’s also fair to say that holidays can just be harder now with how big of a cultural thing it is. Take Christmas- it starts in October! That’s ludicrous right?” he said, making Nile giggle before he continued. “Even I didn’t grow up with celebrations being this huge. I wasn’t paying as much attention to Christmas, obviously, but I know there didn’t used to be this many expectations surrounding it.”

“There’s a Christmas movie semi about that,” she said. “Christmas with the Kranks. Also a fun one.”

“As good as the Grinch?”

“Maybe. It’s certainly funnier.” The whole first half of the movie was really just a series of fun disasters as the Krank family tried to skip Christmas and resist the increasingly militant attempts by their neighbors to fulfill their Christmas obligations. “I think you’re right though, it would be easier, maybe, if it was less of a big deal.”

He shook his head “It would still hurt. I tried that, remember? It might dull it a bit, but it won’t just disappear.”

She let out a sigh, sinking back into her seat. “Yeah. I know,” she whispered.

He gave her arm a gentle squeeze falling quiet as they got closer to town.

************

Another few minutes and the town came into view, Nile ooohing and ahhhing at the lights decorating some of the businesses.

“Are you going to tell me what last minute thing you’re buying?”

He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “Nope! Not unless you tell me what you got for white elephant.”

She looked at him with a completely unimpressed expression. “Not going to happen. But I will say I briefly considered buying and extra dreidel just for Andy since she sucked so bad at it, but I figured she wouldn’t appreciate it or try to kill us again.”

“Definitely the right decision. It would just encourage her. Might even make her threaten us with strip dreidel again.”

Nile let out a choked laugh, her eyes widening. “I’m sorry. Did you just say _strip dreidel_?”

“Unfortunately. That was, God I don’t know, the 70s? It sounds like a 70s idea. I managed to shut it down but it was dicey there for a while.”

“I really didn’t need to know that.”

He laughed at her as they located the grocery store, threatening her with more tales of Andy suggesting various strip games as they found a spot and parked.

He unbuckled and handed her a list, pocketing one for himself. “Here’s is the supplies we need. I’ll shop separately and get what I need for the gift and then we can meet up at the front. Sound good?”

“Ha!” she pointed at him, narrowing her eyes. “This means the gift is food.”

“You don’t know that. It could be cleaning supplies. Or toilet paper. Or cat food.”

She groaned, letting her head fall into her hands “I know you’re joking. I hope. But do not get cat food. If you bring home cat food, you know damn well that someone is going to go get a cat to go with it. Do not do it,” she said, looking up long enough to shoot him a glare.

“That’s actually a very good point. This is why you’re the brains of the team. But don’t worry, it will be much better than cat food.”

With a sigh she followed him out of the car and into the store, grabbing a basket before she split off from him. Her list was short, and it only took a few minutes to find the various ingredients and snacks that would tide them over the next few days and head to the checkout where she had a chance to practice her still shaky German with the clerk. She went up to the front to wait for Booker, occupying herself by alternating between people watching and wondering what the hell was taking him so long. She counted no less than a half dozen slightly frantic people clearly trying to pick up ingredients they had forgotten for Christmas dinner before Booker reappeared a good 20 minutes after she had finished her shopping, his arms laden with bags. 

She took one look at him and rolled her eyes, trying not to laugh. “Are you serious? What kind of gift involves you buying out half the damn store?”

“Patience,” he said, trying to balance all the bags on one arm as he fished for his keys. “You’ll find out soon.”

“I think I used it all up waiting for you to buy a million pounds of food,” she replied with a snort.

Booker wouldn’t let her help him load it in the trunk, so with another eye roll she got the groceries she had bought situated in the backseat before climbing back into the car.

She looked over at him when he finally got in too, crossing her arms in front of her. “You’re telling me that’s all for one white elephant gift.”

He waited until they were back on the main road to reply, his voice sounding entirely too innocent. “You’re the one who assumed it was white elephant. What if it’s just something for you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I do not need that much food.”

“Well, it’s technically for all of us, unless you plan to compete alone,” he said, stealing her line from when she had last given him a gift.

“I am trying to envision what this could possibly be and I’m now very afraid it is something along the lines of strip dreidel.”

He barked out a laugh. “Oh definitely not. The team’s setting it up right now, but who knows maybe we can do it next year.”

“Wait a sec,” she said after she was done cringing at the possibility of next year’s plans, “I thought this was a ‘take Nile on a car ride to talk about her feelings’ thing but really this was just to get me out of the house for a surprise, wasn’t it?”

“Can it not be both?” Booker asked his mouth twitching.

Nile groaned, letting her head fall back against the seat headrest as Booker started talking about the last great surprise he had managed to pull off for the group back in 1992.

************

When they arrived back at the house she was greeted by the sound of a very noisy kitchen, and as she walked in she could see the entire kitchen and dining room area covered in gingerbread and bowls of icing.

Nicky and Quỳnh saw them first and shouted “Surprise!” Nicky with powdered sugar covering the entire front of his shirt. Joe appeared right behind them, holding a bag of candy above his head in triumph.

Andy walked in her arms spread wide as she greeted them. “Welcome to the gingerbread house show down!”

She froze, staring at the explosion of baked goods and everything else that they had all organized for her. She wheeled towards Booker who was ginning at her, eyes crinkled as he took in her shock. “Surprise!” he repeated.

She burst out laughing walking over to get a better look at the gingerbread covering most of the house’s available table space.

“You were right that I did have to get you out of the house. They needed the time to make it all and it’s a lot gingerbread for six people.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she said, “What’s in the bags then?”

He dumped them all out into the nearby chairs, an avalanche of various German and American candies pouting out. “Not anything at all related to white elephant. It’s decorating materials. I was informed that we didn’t have enough.”

“All you bought were Necco wafers and M&Ms!” Joe called from the kitchen, sounding aghast. “How are you supposed to create a masterpiece out of that?”

Booker held up his hands in mock surrender “And this is why I just bought more sugar than I ever knew existed.”

Nile let out another gleeful laugh. “Oh my god. You know you all are going down right? I’ve been decorating gingerbread since pre-k.” Granted, she had never really competed, but she had some practice and seen a lot of elaborate gingerbread houses that her friends or local bakeries had made.

“Copley is going to be the judge of that,” Andy said walking over to them with a stack of bowls that they could dump the various candies into.

“No fucking way. You convinced Copley to judge?” She asked, looking between Andy and Booker

Andy nodded, smirking. “It didn’t really take much convincing. He can’t wait to, and I quote, ‘pretend to be a Food Network judge.”

Nile collapsed into an empty chair, watching Nicky and Joe finish up the last of the gingerbread as she tried to comprehend what was happening. She grinned at Andy. “And what does the winner get?”

“First pick during tomorrow’s gift exchange and a chance to lord it over the rest of us for the next century.”

Nile crossed her arms and leaned back in her seat. “Oh, you are so on.”

I wouldn’t get too cocky Nile,” Nicky warned. “Joe and Quỳnh over here sound like they have plans.”

“So do I. And it’s to crush them.”

“That’s the Christmas spirit!” Booker said, coming over to help divide all the gingerbread, candy, and various decorating tools and supplies into six different piles. “Ok here’s the rules: we’ll all have three hours to make the gingerbread house of Copley’s dreams. No other ingredients or supplies other than what’s provided to you, and no sabotage,” he said with a pointed look at Andy who shrugged, pretending to have no clue what on Earth he was suggesting.

When everything was finally set up Booker set a timer, and as soon as he hit start there was a mad dash for their supplies.

Nile spread everything out on her little section of the kitchen counter that was to be her workstation, Booker right beside her. She went to work icing the cake board that served as her base in white frosting to look like snow, marking out where she wanted the house to be.

Next to her Booker was taking a much more haphazard approach, making the rookie mistake of already trying to ice together his house. She briefly glanced up at the others, all spread around the kitchen table and all appearing to be in varying states of confusion aside from Joe who was already selecting color coordinating candy.

She tried to focus mostly on her own work, getting the walls and roof all iced together and stable, picking out some of her candy while it was drying.

Booker glanced over at her, groaning. “How does yours already look so much sturdier?”

“Use more icing. You can never have too much icing,” she said as she unwrapped the Necco wafers she needed to tile the roof. “I only made the mistake of not using enough icing once and that’s when the roof collapsed after I tried to add the lights and it was devastating.”

“I’m sorry,” Andy broke in, “but did you just say lights?”

“Yeah, they make tiny strands of lights that you can use on gingerbread houses. It’s actually really cute.”

Next to her Booker muttered something under his breath about how when he was Nile’s age he didn’t even have lights in his _real_ house, much less a _gingerbread_ house, but she ignored him, focusing instead on where she should put the chimney.

Around the halfway point she took a break from her own work to grab a drink and scope out the rest of the competition. She wiped her icing-crusted hands on her apron and then took a look around, realizing that she was almost definitely going to win this thing.

Joe’s house looked gorgeous, but he had only started decorating the first wall and now appeared to be helping Nicky, whose cooking skills apparently did not completely translate to making structurally sound gingerbread houses. Joe was propping one of his walls up with one hand to help it dry and with the other helping guide the second part of the roof into places, laughing as Nicky cursed in Italian.

Meanwhile, Quỳnh appeared to have ditched the "house" specification entirely and was working on making castle, using a knife to carefully cut one of the extra pieces of gingerbread into a turret shape. She was still doing better than Andy, who seemed intent on simply ingesting most of her candy. Every piece she successfully managed to ice down she ate at least three. It was like the time they had picked berries over the summer except with Hershey’s kisses, and as a result her house was looking pretty devoid of decorations.

Booker’s was, to put it kindly, a bit of a mess. He kept adding candy to it as if that would somehow make things better, the entire outside of his roof covered in mismatched candy pieces. He also had managed to burst his icing bag, covering a good chunk if his arm in white icing.

“Oh no,” he groaned, trying to wipe up what was on the counter and only succeeding to smear it around. “We have more bags, right?”

Nile took pity on him and dug through their supplies. “No, but if you cut the icing tip out I can show you how to make one out of a regular Ziploc bag. That’s what my mom used to do when we ran out.”

She gingerly grabbed what remained of his original bag, recovering the tip and then showing him how to get it secured to the Ziploc. “See? All fixed. You just can’t squeeze as hard or you’ll get another hole.”

He thanked her, going back to adding entirely too much candy to his house while she took in what she still needed to do for her own house. It was looking pretty damn good, if she did say so herself. She had finished up the little winding path that led from the front door to the edge of the cake board, the sides of the house decorated with icing or wreaths she had made out of sprinkles. All she needed to do was add the candy cane mailbox and then make things for the yard.

She was starting to make some little Christmas trees when Joe looked up at her house and sighed. “That’s beautiful, Nile. We should have taken your trash talking more seriously.”

“Thanks! In your defense, you all pre-date the concept of gingerbread houses, or at least these big modern ones, and most of you don’t really do Christmas so…”

“And if you’re Andy you pre-date both bread _and_ houses,” Booker added.

Andy chucked a handful of skittles at his head before she shoved another handful in her mouth. Nile laughed as Booker tried to duck, watching the two of them glare at each other.

“You’re right, Booker” she said. “Maybe we should cut her some slack and give her a head start next time.”

“What, so she can have more time to eat our supplies? I have no sympathy.”

“I can hear you two, you know.” Andy scowled, threatening Booker with another handful of projectile candy.

Quỳnh grabbed her arm and the bag of candy Andy was eating from. “It’s fine, they just don’t see your artistic vision,” she said, trying to keep a straight face.

“Which is what? Extreme Minimalism?” Nicky snorted.

“Brutalism,” Andy replied automatically.

Nile laughed as Nicky just shook his head. “You know Booker,” she started, still working on her trees, “I might actually prefer Andy’s brutalism to your disaster Rococo gingerbread.”

He gave her an indignant look, waving off her comment. “You didn’t even live through the Rococo!” Leave me and my ornate French décor alone.”

“Neither did you!” she half-shouted. “The Rococo ended in the 1760s so you can shut your Napoleonic-era-Neoclassism mouth!”

That set Joe off on an art story about meeting Rococo painters, and Booker to sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “There’s two of you now. I don’t know if I can take it.”

Nile rolled her eyes. “Get used to it. If it bothers, you that much I’m going to intentionally start talking about art periods whenever you annoy me.”

“Great, thanks. And what type of art style are you going for since you clearly know so much.”

“It’s what the youth call cottagecore.”

Booker gave her a blank stare. “Cottagecore?”

“Yeah, it’s an internet thing. It’s really woodsy, see?” She pointed out the little forest she was making behind her house.

He just shook his head and went back to doing whatever he was doing with his house, while Nile started on the snowmen.

*************

The last 15 minutes were hectic. She had managed her time pretty well, just rushing a bit to ice the ice cream cone that was going to become a big Christmas tree at the front of the house. Joe had made a tiny bit more progress on his house, but it was still only half-done since for the past 30 minutes he had apparently gone over to help Nicky with something else and then just never left.

Quynh had somehow used twizzlers to make a working drawbridge for her castle, she and Andy were laughing about how she should have tried to make a moat.

“I can try to help with that if we do this next year,” Nile called out to her. “A sugar glass moat would be really cool. You would just have to make a little trench and then pour the melted sugar in.”

Quynh looked highly impressed, turning back to Andy to brainstorm what else they should try to make out of gingerbread and sugar glass.

When the timer went off, they all stepped back, Booker with some swearing, and then set all the houses side by side on one table for Copley to judge.

Booker FaceTimed him, and as soon as they flipped the camera to show him their creations, he burst out laughing. “This was a wonderful decision. Though I don’t know why you bothered to have me do blind judging because I have some pretty good guesses as to who made each of these.” Nevertheless, he got started, doing his best impression of a Food Network judge as Booker held the phone up to each house.

The first up was Booker’s and Copley took one look at it making a face. “I appreciate… the dedication to using as much candy as possible. I’m sure for that reason it tastes delicious but looks-wise…it leaves something to be desired.”

Nile burst out laughing as Booker gave an exaggerated pout, sliding over so Copley could see Joe and Nicky’s. Nicky’s looked fine, if still a little crooked despite both he and Joe’s best efforts. “A lovely house, if not up to earthquake code,” was Copley’s verdict. When he got to Joe’s he tried not to laugh. “The part that’s finished looks incredible. The other half of it is just sad.”

When he came to Andy’s Copley fell silent for a second. “This is… someone really just did not want to decorate, huh?”

“It’s a deconstruction of a gingerbread house” Andy deadpanned, Joe and Nicky snickering behind her.

“Oh, you’re going the deconstruction route. Ok. Well. My verdict is just no.”

Booker watched her downfall with glee, pivoting to show Copley Quỳnh's next. While not being a house, hers was a pretty great looking castle. She had added two turrets and the drawbridge, as well as a few sour patch kids at the top as guards. “This is amazing! Outstanding creativity and craftsmanship,” Copley declared before moving on to hers.

“Yeah, this one’s good,” he said almost immediately. “Nile this has to be yours, right?”

She grinned, raising her eyebrows

“Yeah, that tracks. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I love the outdoor scenery you made. And are those icicles?”

She glanced over at Booker with a smug smile and mouthed “Cottagecore,” receiving an eyeroll in return.

After one last glance at all them Copley was ready to declare the winner, announcing Nile winner for best Gingerbread house and Quynh the winner for best gingerbread creation. Quynh pulled her into a hug as the others clapped for them before Copley went on to rank all the rest, Booker coming in a distant 5th but still grinning because at least he beat out Andy.

They all chatted with Copley for another minute before hanging up so they could start the clean-up process since a good chunk of the safehouse was now sticky with icing residue and bits of candy.

Booker and Nile volunteered to move the six houses to the coffee and side tables in the living room so they’d be out of the way, Nile gingerly grabbing hers off the counter and slowly walking it into the other room.

“So. How does it feel to be one half of the reigning gingerbread queens?” Booker teased.

“Really great. I told you I would crush it.”

“I had no doubt. Yours is almost too pretty to eat.”

Nile tilted her head towards Nicky’s house that Booker had just set down and that Andy and Nicky had already eaten off of despite the contest having just finished. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that.”

He looked where she had nodded, unable to hide his bemusement at the missing pieces of candy along the edge of the roof. “I suppose not.”

Nile glanced at the houses again, even the losing houses making the room look all cute and wintery. She turned back to Booker “I haven’t thanked you for this yet, but I really appreciate it. This was a wonderful surprise,” she said softly.

He gave her a warm smile. “I’m glad you had fun. We should do this again next year, try to make it an annual tradition and up the ante somehow.”

“As long as it doesn’t turn into strip gingerbread I’m down.”

He pulled a face. “Ugh, no. I was thinking more like Copley could give us themes or we could find weird candy to include.”

Nile nodded at him. “I like that idea.” There was a piece of her that still missed baking with her mom. She would have beat out all of them today and made it look easy, teasing them all along the way in between trying to help them. But what they had done today was lovely, too, the team all having a ridiculous amount fun together. “It’ll give me a yearly chance to whoop you all at something,” she added with a sly smile.

“Are you really trash talking a whole year in advance?” Booker asked, raising an eyebrow. “You really think we’re going to let you win again?”

Nile just shrugged, glancing from the six somewhat formed houses surrounding her to the mess that sill half covered the kitchen that Andy was working on cleaning, getting icing all over her shirt in the process. She looked up at Booker, his eyes still bright with laughter as she schooled her features, trying to get her game face on as she answered his question. “I think I’m going to _beat_ you again,” she corrected, “and I’m looking forward to having fun doing it."

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend making gingerbread houses as a holiday tradition, though in my experience extreme gingerbread making takes much, much longer than three hours! And while Nile may not have movie opinions, I certainly do, and my hot take is that Christmas with the Kranks is a great Christmas movie and also that the first half of it contains a bit of Hanukkah spirit because of how it depicts the community trying to force the Kranks to conform to their Christmas traditions. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your holiday season!


End file.
